Tattered Life
by StanCartmen
Summary: AU-Freddy's never killed, Loretta never died, but Katherine's life...is hard to explain
1. Chapter 1

Freddy and Loretta are sitting downstairs on their green and white plaid couch in their humble abode of a living room. Their daughter, Katherine, is upstairs making a loud thumping noise.

"Loretta, can you make her stop that noise?" Freddy Krueger asked his wife.

"Of course," she replied, smiling.

She started up the stairs, her dress thumping against the tan stairs lightly. She was at the top of the stairs and walking toward her daughter's room.

Freddy could steal hear the thumping noise downstairs. He then heard one last, deafening thump and the house fell silent. Loretta came back down; examining her left hand and Freddy went up. He walked in and saw her room:

Katherine's room was painted midnight blue; a dark wooden floor and a black carpet were around. Her bed had a black comforter and black headboard. She had mahogany dressers that had unique carvings, done by her at age five.

He saw a hump under her covers and went to sit down on her bed.

"Go away," she said, "I'm sleeping,"

He complied, believing her about her excuse. He asked his wife what she was doing when he went back downstairs:

"Just cleaning her room, I'm going to bed," she replied, tousling his thick, curly dirty blonde hair.

He soon went up after, it being around ten and him having to get up and go to work at the power plant. His wife also had to go to work at the Crave Inn diner, while his daughter went to school. Freddy was working a pretty good job, making plenty of money for his family, Loretta was still a waitress, working minimum wage.

Katherine sat in her room, thinking about how the next day was going to be. She hadn't studied for her test and knew what would happen if she failed another one. She had been grounded for so long and her parents promised she would be able to get out if she passed her next test. She had been grounded for two and half weeks, no TV nor stereo.

Freddy went to bed, having another disturbed dream. He had been having them since Katherine was about seven and didn't know what they meant. He knew his wife slept peacefully because he would always wake up and see her sleepy smiling face.

Loretta actually had been having the same dreams as her husband but every time she heard him wake up, she shut her eyes and smiled, making the impression she was having a great dream. She knew she couldn't keep the charade up for much longer because, although he hadn't been getting suspicious that anything was wrong, her daughter had. She had noticed the differences in personality.

Katherine woke up the next morning and took a shower in the dark, as a way of an extra ten minutes of sleep. She then dressed and went downstairs for breakfast. She sat next to her father and made herself some toast.

"Eat more Katherine, your too thin," Freddy joked.

"Yeah right, if anything, I need to lose weight," she replied.

"Nah, your already stick thin,"

Katherine laughed at his joke, knowing, unfortunately that it was true. There wasn't anything medically wrong with her that made her thin, she just looked like it and her peers made fun of her for it. She didn't really care though, as she had her own little circle of friends. She ran outside to meet them as one of them honked a car horn, the one of her sister.

Loretta left for work shortly after Katherine went outside. Freddy didn't go to work for a couple more hours and he decided to go down to his cellar and work…


	2. Chapter 2

Katherine and Shannon, who's been her friend for as long as she could remember, were both walking to school one day, when Shannon notices something.

"What's that?" she asked, indicating something that looked like a bruise forming on Katherine's right arm, twisting to the left like a burn.

"Nothing, hit my arm last night against my desk," Katherine replied.

"What were you doing, trying to lift it up?"

The bruise was on her right wrist, twisting towards the left, like a burn. Katherine diverted the subject; changing it to the test they were going to have that day.

Freddy sat in his cellar, welding together different pieces of metal, constructing something he had seen, although he couldn't remember where he had seen it. It was just being constructed and he was in a trance. He never even went to work that day, just sat in his cellar, constructing something forgotten.

Katherine had to take the test in History. She isn't the wiz in History, just average; unlike her other subjects where she doesn't even have to study. She studied all during lunch that day and tried to get in enough facts that she needed before class. It hadn't seemed to be working very good since she couldn't remember a thing she had studied.

_I am so dead. _

That was the only thought running through her head as she jotted down her answers. She wasn't using Shannon's technique of copying everyone else's answers at least. She was being honest; honest that she was going to fail.

The teacher had graded and handed back all the tests before the end of the period and Katherine had barely slid by.

"Yes a 75," she said.

"I only got a 60 and I copied all Alex's answers," Shannon remarked.

"Alex isn't smart,"

"_What? _No wonder I wasn't failing last semester when I sat next to Jen,"

The bell rang, releasing the students from this day of Jr. Hell School.

"Wanna watch a movie at my house?" Shannon asked her best friend.

"No I got to do chores and we have that project," Katherine replied.

"Project? In what class?"

"Math,"

"Who gives math projects, seriously?" Shannon asked sarcastically.

Katherine laughed, "I'll see ya tomorrow," she said.

"Bye," Shannon yelled as she ran for her home.

Katherine started her lonely walk home, trudging up the hill from the school.

Loretta got off work early and went home, only to find her daughter not home from school yet and her husband in the basement.

"What are you doing down there?" she called down the steps.

"Welding something I think," he called back up.

"You think?"

"Yeah, I'm not sure what I'm making but I think it is a person,"

"I'll call you up when dinner's ready," she said, receiving a grunt of agreement.

"I'm home," Katherine called in through the door, not expecting a reply.

"Hey Katherine," Loretta yelled from the kitchen.

"What are you doing home so early?" Katherine asked as she sat down at the kitchen table.

"Got off work early since all I had to do today was train some new girl," she replied.

"I'm gonna go do my homework," Katherine said, and trotted upstairs.

_What was he doing in the basement? I heard that torch he uses when he welds snap on. _

Katherine started on her work as soon as she got up in her room. She left her mom to cooking some weird meal, then throwing it out and ordering a pizza.

_She's a waitress that can't cook. That's a great profession choice._

It turned out to be a man, what he was working on, covered in burns. He had a glove on, with knives on the end; a hat was starting to be constructed.

"Freddy! Katherine! Dinner!" Loretta yelled up and down stairs.

Two pairs of feet shuffled into the kitchen, the smell of pizzas emanating from it.

"How was that test?" Freddy joked.

"I passed,"

"So that ends the grounding now," Freddy hit the table, causing himself to laugh. He was still feeling awkward about what he had created during the day. It wasn't like him to create something like that, although since the dreams had started, he had started making gloves like the one welded onto the man; a right hand too.

_**Freddy had a dream like the previous one, except this one had the man he welded. He was killing someone, a child. Freddy looked on, through the chains of a boiler room. He saw the man kill the child.**_

"_**Freddy we know what you want!" a deep voice said.**_

"You want everything; you want it all," a not so deep voice added.

_**  
It showed him, in a fire, and three things fly into him, surprising him and causing him to awake.**_

_What was that? I haven't had a dream like that._

He went downstairs for a drink and saw Katherine sitting at the table, working on homework.

"What are you doing up so late?" he asked, "Your mom would kill you,"

"I have to finish this paper," she replied.

He stood over her and, not able to understand any of it, went back upstairs. He lied back down in his bed next to Loretta. He looked at her face and she seemed troubled.

Katherine woke up the next morning and went downstairs, skipping breakfast as she was already late. She bolted out the door and ran to school.

Freddy got up the next morning and went back downstairs, as Loretta was already at work, and worked on the man again…


	3. Chapter 3

"We have new projects," Katherine's mythology teacher said, causing the class to groan, "I'm gonna assign everyone a character or subject from mythology and you're going to do research on it and present it in 2 weeks," she finished.

"Hey, Katherine," a voice from behind asked her.

She turned around to find Lyssa, her old friend from childhood, before school, when she joined a new crowd.

"Yeah?" Katherine replied.

"Did you sign up for this class because you thought it'd be easy? I did and now we have a _project_," Lyssa complained, saying 'project' as if it were a cuss word.

"No, I like mythology; always something different," Katherine replied as she turned back around.

Lyssa tapped her shoulder and continued to talk to her, surprising her greatly.

"Could ya help me with mine? I'm not very book smart," she asked sweetly, although Katherine saw through her façade.

"Then you shouldn't have signed up for a class that you couldn't spell," Katherine replied coldly, without turning around.

The teacher walked to all the kids' desks and handed them packets. When she was done, she walked back to the front of the room; "You may start now; go down to the library."

The students all rushed down to the library, although none were gonna start on their projects; they were going to talk, write notes and act like complete idiots.

By the time Katherine got the books she needed, it was time to go to her next class so she checked them out and through them in her locker, rushing to make it to her next class.

"Hey," Shannon said to Katherine as she entered the room, just barely before their bell rang, "cutting it kinda close, don't ya think?"

"Shut up!"Katherine stated playfully. "I was in the library with my 'class', although that might be too optimistic a term," Katherine replied.

After dinner that night, Katherine pulled all her books out on the new clean table and started to research. Her topic had been Dream Demons, which she had actually never heard of. She was more interesting in Greek mythology but she decided that it might be cool.

She opened the first book, one titled Dream Demon Prophecies and Myths. She looked through it, while her mother washed dishes and her father read the paper nearby.

Katherine was looking through the same book, that apparently had a lot more information than she had caught on when she first picked it up, and just finishing with the prophecies. The final page of prophecies surprised her the most; it was about the ultimate Dream Demon, someone who guards the negative gate of dreams, the Nightmare gate.

She turned the page to the picture and was stunned by what she saw; man wearing a tattered sweater of red and green, a dirty old fedora and he had a burnt face; the third degree burns very visible on his face.

That wasn't what stunned her though. She was stunned at who he looked like; her father.


End file.
